- The summit will bring together major countries, big tech companies and researchers to agree on safeguards to assess and monitor the most significant risks from AI.
- Prime Minister and President Biden will meet at the White House today to take a coordinated approach to emerging technology opportunities and challenges
- Global companies are expanding their AI operations in the UK as the Prime Minister approves new university scholarships to further UK and US technology leadership
The UK will host its first major global summit on AI safety, the Prime Minister announced today (Wednesday, 7 June) as the world grapples with the challenges and opportunities posed by rapid advances in artificial intelligence.
Breakthroughs in AI continue to improve our lives, from enabling paralyzed people to walk to discovering powerful bacteria-killing antibiotics. But AI is evolving very quickly, and this pace of change requires agile leadership. That is why the UK is taking action. The UK has a global obligation to ensure that this technology is developed and adopted safely and responsibly.
Last week, dozens of leading experts warned that AI could endanger humanity in the same way pandemics and nuclear weapons do.
Today in Washington, DC, the Prime Minister will emphasize the importance of like-minded allies and companies working to develop an international framework to ensure the safe and reliable development and use of AI.
The summit, which will take place in the UK this fall, will examine the risks of AI, including frontier systems, and discuss ways to mitigate risks through internationally coordinated action. It also provides a platform for countries to work together to further develop common approaches to mitigate these risks.
In recent weeks, the prime minister has discussed the issue with a number of businessmen and world leaders. This includes all members of the G7, who were united in their ambition to take a common approach to the issue at last month’s Hiroshima Summit.
In May, the Prime Minister also met in Downing Street with the CEOs of three cutting-edge AI labs: OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic, and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology also hosted a roundtable with senior AI leaders. The work at the AI Safety Summit builds on recent discussions at the G7, OECD and the Global Partnership on AI.
In July, the Foreign Minister will also convene the first UN Security Council briefing session on the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence to international peace and security.
The UK is well positioned to host discussions about the future of AI. The UK is the world leader in AI, and she ranks third after the US and China. Our AI sector already contributes her £3.7bn to the UK economy and employs her 50,000 people across the country.
Brexit also allows us to act more quickly and nimbly in response to this rapidly changing market. The UK was one of the first developed countries to develop a blueprint for the safe and responsible development of AI, and AI will adapt to the speed of this technology’s progress. And the UK has launched a task force of experts to help build and deploy the next generation of secure AI, backed by £100 million in funding to help develop computing power in the UK, including exascale supercomputers. has also delivered on its promise to spend £900 million.
Last month, OpenAI and Anthropic opened an office in London, with OpenAI appointing UK firm Faculty as its technology integration partner and announcing the expansion of Google Deepmind under the leadership of King’s Cross-based Demis Hassabis.
Recognizing the strength of UK AI expertise, US tech giant Palantir also announced today that the UK will be its new European headquarters for AI development. Palantir already employs over 800 people in the UK and has provided the underlying architecture for data processing to many of the world’s most important companies and institutions.
Alexander C. Karp, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Palantir Technologies Inc. and Chairman of the Palantir Foundation for Defense Policy & International Affairs, said:
An institution’s ability to effectively capture recent advances in artificial intelligence, especially large-scale language models, will determine which organizations succeed and ultimately survive in the long term.
We are proud to extend our partnership with the UK, which employs around a quarter of the world’s workforce. London attracts the best software engineering talent in the world, making it a natural choice for the European effort to develop the most effective and ethical artificial intelligence software solutions available.
Today, the Prime Minister will meet with President Biden at the White House to discuss a broad range of Anglo-American relations, particularly how we can work together to strengthen our economies and strengthen our joint leadership in technology for the future.
The UK and US are two of only three countries in the world with technology industries worth over $1 trillion. This is partly due to the strength of our universities and research institutes, with 7 of the world’s top 10 research universities located in our country.
The Prime Minister will also announce an increase in the number of UK Government-funded scholarships for students undertaking postgraduate study and research at UK and US universities to strengthen their shared expertise in STEM subjects.
The scholarship increase announced today will increase the number of Marshall scholarships by 25% to 50 per year. The Marshall Institute was established 70 years ago to give a high potential American the opportunity to study in England for her two years. Alumni of the program include two current Supreme Court justices, founders of companies such as Dolby Labs and LinkedIn, and a Nobel laureate.
The UK will also fund five new Fulbright scholarships each year, up from the 25 currently funded. Funded primarily by the United States, the Fulbright Program helps international students study in the United States and vice versa. Since the program began in 1948, approximately 15,000 Britons have been awarded Fulbright Scholarships to study in the United States.
These new scholarships focus on STEM-related subjects and strengthen shared UK and US expertise in future technologies.
